


That Past No Longer Exists

by Kazzy



Category: The Pretender
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-27
Updated: 2010-06-27
Packaged: 2017-10-12 04:48:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/120977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kazzy/pseuds/Kazzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Debbie Broots is eighteen before she remembers to ask what happened to Miss Parker.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	That Past No Longer Exists

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Awesome Ladies Ficathon](http://ineffort.livejournal.com/199061.html). For the prompt _'Debbie Broots: that past no longer exists'_.  
>  Disclaimer: Not mine.

  
-x-x-x-x-x-x-  
Debbie Broots is eighteen before she remembers to ask what happened to Miss Parker. She only met the woman a handful of times, and even the most lasting impression fades with time.

She barely remembers the woman's initial coolness, but she does remember reading _Little Women_ with her, and shopping with her and the feeling of absolute safeness whenever she was near. And yet when Debbie and her father packed up and left Blue Cove (quickly, very quickly after The Centre closed – and she never did find out what he did there other than something with computers), she didn't question why they had no more contact with her father's boss.

She was, after all, Debbie's father's boss.

Over the years she has wondered what became of Miss Parker, but never really got around to asking until she was packing up to go to college.

"Dad, whatever happened to Miss Parker – you know, your old boss?"

Her father, poking at her bookcase, freezes and Debbie thinks of deer in headlights. "Why'd you ask?"

She shrugs, and answers honestly, "Just wondering."

He frowns at her and years of practise have taught how to read him and she can see he's calculating what he should tell her. And that's enough to make her really wonder, because she had just been curious, but now it's obvious there is a lot more she doesn't know.

"She moved on," he answers at last. "Just like everyone else."

It's fair enough answer, but his careful consideration makes her worried. "She didn't die, did she?"

"Why on Earth would you think that?" he demands.

"You seem...weird...about it."

"She didn't die."

"Then what?" she persists.

He doesn't answer immediately so she prods him again. "Dad?"

"Just leave it, Debbie!" he snaps at last, truly angry – and she can count on one hand the times she seen that happen.

He makes to storm out the room, leaving her stunned in his wake, but he stops at the door and turns around, contrite, not that Debbie in her shock really registers it.

"Debs, I'm sorry," he says. "But some things are better left in the past." And he leaves Debbie flummoxed in his wake.

-x-x-x-  
He's called into work later that evening and she uses the opportunity to do a little bit of hunting.

There's no point in trying his computer, even she's not good enough to get past his encryptions and codes and passwords and god knows what else he uses as protection. And yes, she's tried. When she was sixteen she made it her personal mission to see if she could break into it and she spent the better part of a year with no success.

At the back of the wardrobe, however, she finds the lock box she knows he keeps important documents (the ones that can't be stored on a computer). Picking locks is fairly easy, and she considers it ironic that it was Miss Parker who taught her how to do that (and wouldn't her father be horrified) one rainy Saturday when Debbie was twelve and Miss Parker had a twisted ankle and needed someone to look after her.

The box has her and her father's birth certificates, her parent's marriage licence and divorce papers, her official custody agreement and a handful of boring papers to do with the house and her school and her father's job. Near the bottom, though, she find a letter that's full of dense legalese which she can't quite make out (math was always more her subject, math and computers), but if she's reading it right it's saying that her father was given a rather large amount of money in compensation for something to do with his job at the Centre. The number of zeros is...lengthy.

Debbie and her father have always lived in nice houses (a lot nicer than her mother could afford, of course her mother gambled and drank away any money she earned – or was given), they've had a number of nice trips overseas, Debbie has always gone to good private schools and she knows that she doesn't need the scholarship she earned to go to college. She also has a trust fund, which she's never been allowed to touch...though a quick glance shows the documents for that are here too and...

Whoa. Okay. That's a lot of money. Pretty much all of that compensation, then.

The initial letter is dated not long before she and her dad left Blue Clove.

Debbie sits there for a long time, thinking about what it might mean – until she hears her father's car pull into garage. She swears and shoves the papers back into the box, and the box back into his wardrobe and makes a dash for her room. A quick glance and she decides against further packing instead plonks herself in front of her computer, pulling up her email.

Thirty seconds later she's already typing and email to Kara about the weekend when her father sticks his head around the door. "Chinese for dinner?"

"Yeah, sure," she says, and if she sounds distracted she's pretty sure he puts it down to the email.

-x-x-x-  
In the bustle of the end of summer, the final parties, saying goodbye to friends and packing herself off to college Debbie doesn't forget about Miss Parker and what might or might not have happened to her, but she does put it to the back of her mind. Similarly, the first few weeks of college are so busy she barely has time to breathe, let alone solve old mysteries.

However, she does manage a few quick internet searches, turning up nothing of use. She could try a few government sites she knows about, but as her dad says, that's something you only do once – and she was a minor last time.

But whatever happened to a corporation, known as the Centre, in a small town in Delaware, it's never been reported publicly anywhere.

Her frustration at her lack of success only increases her determination to succeed. And finally, she has a free weekend, so decides to take a trip cross country. She arrives in Blue Cove sometime early Saturday morning and falls into bed in the town's only motel, waking sometime just after noon.

The locals have very little idea about what happened at the Centre both before and after it closed ('think tank of some sort', 'closed after some trouble with government or something') and they certainly didn't know what had happened to those that worked there. All they know is that the closure had been devastating for the small town as most of the employees moved away, and they had counted for a considerable portion of the population.

Dead end after dead end means she turns in early Saturday evening, tired and grumpy, knowing less than she could have possibly hoped. Even the local library hasn't been helpful: the newspapers from the era are vague and reporting on the closure of the Centre brief. People really had been more concerned about the negative effect on the economy of the town.

Sunday morning, she is up with the sun and drives up to the Centre itself. She can't get close to the building in her car: fences topped with razor wire and liberally sprinkled with signs that gave grave warnings about trespassing and condemned buildings keep her well back. But an hour's walk toward the beach reveals a dip in the terrain, and a patch of fence that isn't visible from the road and has been helpfully pulled back by some vandal.

Debbie thinks about what to do next. But turning around and going home without her answers is not an option. Carefully, she pulls back the hole a little further and steps through.

-x-x-x-  
It takes her nearly twenty minutes to reach the main building, and another twenty minutes to find a broken window she can crawl through to get inside.

Inside the building it is dim and gloomy and she stands in what she remembers as a grand and imposing foyer, but is now just large empty room with a dry fountain. Her footsteps echo as she heads towards a staircase and something rustles causing her to jump, and then relax as it is accompanied with a loud squeaking.

Rats aren't the only things that have made their homes here, but she doubts that there's anything large enough to truly do her harm. Just as long as there are no humans, of course, and that that hole was simply made by thrill seeking delinquents or curious teens.

Thinking of encountering some lost soul here gives her the creeps and she wishes momentarily that she'd thought to bring Kara or Leah or Matt (or all three) with her to keep her company. But she knows they'd never understand why she's here and would probably give her a whole list of reasons why she should be really scared of being here. She shrugs off her nerves and moves on.

She remembers her father and Miss Parker and man named Sydney worked on level 5. Except the floors went down and not up, so that would make it _sub_ -level 5. She tries not to think of cheesy metaphors of descending into a pit, and wonders why her mind is being so melodramatic. Too much late-night television, no doubt.

There are lifts, but of course they aren't working (she really would be afraid if they were), so she uses the stair well and learns to be glad that she brought a flashlight (and mace, because she really isn't stupid). Her footsteps echo both ahead and behind her and she wonders how far down this place goes and this time she can't stop her mind from bring up images of lava and brimstone – two equally unappealing notions.

With gladness she steps out at the floor marked SL-5 and finds her memory works well enough to get her to the office where her father worked.

It's empty of everything except insects, rats and dust. She sneezes and leaves quickly.

Miss Parker's office is larger and dustier, but home to less living things so she steps inside and takes a look around. This room, too, is apparently empty, but then she spots, half hidden, under the desk what looks like a metal briefcase.

Likely, it is nothing but she pulls it out anyway and plonks it on the desk. It's unlocked and she opens it to find not papers, yellowed and fragile, or even more dust or a nest, but some sort of player that looks like it may have a precursor to portable DVD players. There's a disk in the player already, so she flicks the on switch – though she doesn't expect much, it's been sitting here unused for years, any battery it may have once had has to be long dead.

To her surprise the machine comes to life and an image springs up on the screen. It's labelled JAROD, designated FOR CENTRE USE ONLY and dated 4/13/70. And she recognises it as being some data footage for the centre – possibly something to do with the whole 'think tank' thing.

She understands very little of what follows, the boy, apparently Jarod, is talking about an explosion and fuel and oxygen and the moon; but Debbie is more interested in the silhouette of a little girl hiding in the shadows. She feels as if she should know her, but how could she possibly know anyone who was a child in the 70s?

She watches as the boy is helped from the clear plastic bubble in which he has been sitting, and she notices the girl is gone.

On the recording there are sounds of a struggle and a woman cries out. The boy asks what it is, and a man denies knowledge. Sensing trouble, the boy dives in the direction of the noise but is pulled back, he continues to struggle as gunshots ring out and the girl from earlier is pulled in. Like the boy she crying and trying to get free, screaming for her mother.

The recording ends and freezes on the girl's face, trauma and anguish clear for the world to see.

Debbie has only seen her once before, smiling and happy in a picture with her mother – the woman who had evidently just been killed, possibly right in front of her daughter. Miss Parker.

Sick dread fills Debbie, and she slams the case shut and pulls it with her as she leaves the room at full tilt.

She runs past her father's office and up five flights of stairs to the ground floor, through the lobby and out the window, where she throws up on the grass and the case thuds to the ground.

What was her father involved in? What did he do here? What was the Centre? And why was Miss parker there as a child?

Long moments later, gulping in fresh air, Debbie picks up the case and heads back to her car. Somehow it's daylight, not even midday yet.

She doesn't know what the meaning of the disk is and why it was left sitting forgotten in Miss Parker's office, but she's determined to find out. And why the recording had FOR CENTRE USE ONLY stamped all over it.

So she doesn't go back to school, instead she drives home to her father who is understandably worried when she turns up unannounced. He's even more worried when he gets a good look at what is sitting on the backseat.

But he refuses to tell her what it is, and refuses to tell her about the recording, telling her over and over that she has no right to know. The Centre is dead and gone and best left that way.

All her life, Debbie has had her own way with her father. He's a good dad, he hasn't spoiled her, but if there was something she really wanted, it was hers with very little fight. He's a bit of a push over, he has the means to give her most things and there's a good helping of guilt that her mother is a total screw-up (not that he's ever referred to her as such, but she is).

And still he refuses to give in to her, and Debbie doesn't know how to deal with this man who has suddenly developed a will of iron. So she walks out.

She's halfway back to school, it's nearly five in the morning (she's exhausted beyond words) and he's left three messages on her phone – that she's deleted without listening to – before she realises that she left the recording and player at her father's house. And she knows even if she turns around now and goes back she'll never see it again. What he's going to do with it, she has no idea, but she's sure he'll find some permanent way to get rid of it.

Over the next few months, her father calls and leaves messages on her phone, which she deletes without listening to, and eventually she buys a new phone with a new number, though she doesn't dispose of the first. Her school fees are paid and her allowance is deposited into her spending account.

She spends Thanksgiving at school and feels like a complete loser. A birthday card arrives on the correct date with a fairly spectacular gift certificate attached, which she isn't quite stupid enough to tear into little pieces (even if part of her really wants to). She spends Christmas with Leah and feels an aching loneliness.

Every week her phone bleeps with a new message and she deletes it without listening to it.

Until the day she doesn't.

 _Hi Debbie, it's Dad, just checking in. I'm sorry. Please call me. I love you._

With shaking fingers she dials his number, and waits with increasing nervousness as the line rings and he answers.

"Daddy?" she says and then she's sobbing and he's crying too and apologising over and over.

-x-x-x-  
They rebuild their relationship slowly: perhaps more so than they could have done, because he still won't tell her what happened at the Centre, what the recording was about and what he was really involved in when he worked there. He does tell her that Miss Parker is safe and happy and living her own life.

She thinks he might be lying, but she has no way of proving it so she allows herself to believe him and eventually stops asking.

Debbie Broots will never find out what happened to Miss Parker, but she makes sure she never forgets.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-


End file.
